Earlier this month community members packed the auditorium at Symantec headquarters to watch a special screening of the documentary “CODEGIRL.” The film follows teams of girls from around the world as they compete to win the Technovation Challenge, an international mobile app competition that empowers young women to solve an issue in their community by creating an app, learning to code, and developing a business plan.

Programs like Technovation and documentaries like “CODEGIRL” are extremely important because they seek to expose and expunge a lingering problem in the tech industry: the lack of diversity in the workforce. The industry is flourishing. New startups are launching, Fortune 500 leaders are hiring, and innovation is off the charts. Yet despite this incredible growth, women and minorities are immensely underrepresented. Only 11 percent of the workforce is female; only four percent is black; and only five percent is Hispanic. This is clearly not acceptable nor is it sustainable as the competition for talent and the need for constant innovation continues to rise.

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